Emptiness During Lent
By Emma Stehle
Fasting for the most part is something that I do not look forward to. I do love Lent once we get to Easter. I have found that the harder the Lent, the more joyful Easter seems. Every Lent I make a resolution to fast holier, suffer more graciously and eventually fall into weakness and grump at the fasts that I have undertaken.
Although year by year the Lord has changed my reflection of the emptiness, the silence I encounter during this season. This Ash Wednesday when my stomach grumbled for food there was a complete moment of grace when I delighted in this feeling of frailty. It was strange but profound. I marveled at the moment that I suddenly became very aware of my body when I was hungry. I was present to the emptiness that I felt. It wasn’t something to be anxious or nervous about, just something to be present to in that moment. I thought to myself, this what I feel like spiritually and emotionally when I ache with desire for love. This is a reflection of my souls’ hunger and thirst for God. It made this moment of feelings the small sufferings of my fast surprisingly prayerful and uplifting. My need for God, for nourishment is so great my body, my soul aches.
Sometimes in life we turn away from the thing that we actually need. Like when we are feeling particularly sluggish, we might actually need to go on 20 minutes run rather than laze on the couch. I find it very easy to run away from praying or turning my gaze towards Jesus in moments of needing assurance or a sense of belonging. Yet when my body is hungry, I eat. But when my heart cries for connection, I turn to relationships, performance, YouTube and distractions alike. And this is what Lent is about. When we feel the emptiness of our fast, we are called to recognize our weakness and turn to the One who can save us therefore calling us and qualifying us to a deep dependency on God. And a dependency on something or someone attachment and in a way intimacy.
I don’t say this to say dismiss the things in your life that give your life like relationships, work, or even entertainment. These are goods. But the ultimate good is our Savior. Lent is a time of reconnection to the reality that each moment is a flow of God’s grace and gift, each moment, each need, each sorrow, each burst of joy, and each flirtation with laughter belongs to him. He, the King of Glory, reigns over our joy and our cross, our emptiness -filling us with his very self to those who dispose himself to his richness. This divine kinship is a calling for everyone. We are all invited to welcome the Prince of Peace into every detail of our life, this is what our relationship and life with the Trinity is all about.
The mark of our faith is the one of the cross and the resurrection. Jesus asks us to live this fully with him day to day, dying and rising side by side.
